James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Continuing the story of how the book Dinotopia came to be....
What should Arthur Denison’s journal look like? To find out, I traveled to the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. and asked to see their collection of nineteenth century explorer’s sketchbooks. (This photo was taken after Dinotopia was published.)

Most of them were executed in pencil and watercolor, with cursive script for the written notes. I took an old book in my collection and mocked it up with a fake cover to look like my own copy of Denison’s journal.

Early mock-up of Denison’s Journal
Evoking that sketchbook look meant developing a lighter, more transparent technique than I was accustomed to. I wasn’t comfortable enough in watercolor, so I came up with an unusual way of working in oil paint for the vignetted illustrations, something that would look more improvisational and show the pencil drawing underneath.

In contrast to the sketchy vignettes, I wanted a few pictures to be more finished and to completely spill over the edges of the pages. Paintings like Dinosaur Boulevard required several weeks to produce. Creating such a picture was like directing a single frame from a Hollywood movie.

I based my approach on methods that I gleaned from the Golden Age American illustrators and the academic painters of Europe. I studied everything I could find about artists such as Lawrence Alma Tadema, Adolphe-William Bouguereau, and Jean-Léon Gérôme, who faced similar challenges creating detailed, realistic paintings of worlds they couldn’t observe firsthand.

Friends as models
For my references I used ordinary things that I found around me. I made charcoal studies from costumed models, or I photographed my neighbors and friends posing in small groups. They wore theater costumes that I bought from a rental company in New York that was selling off its dilapidated stock.

The girls in the parade posed with artificial flowers, bought at the five-and-dime store in our small town. Sometimes I dressed up in a costume and acted out a part in front of a full-length mirror. I made three-dimensional maquettes of dinosaurs and architectural details using clay, tissue paper, cardboard, and dowel rods.

Set of homemade maquettes
I made a miniature skybax from a combination of toothpicks, wire, leather, and polymer clay. For the wing membrane I used my wife’s discarded pantyhose. I set up these models in natural light conditions to observe how the light and shadow played across the forms. A typical day might find me building a cardboard hat, pacing around snarling like a Tyrannosaurus, and helping my two boys with their own studio projects.

The process of writing the book began with a fifteen-page outline, which laid out the overall story structure and character arcs. Then I planned the composition of each page spread by means of a complete storyboard, drawn in pencil on pre-printed pieces of card stock.

Unused art: "Saurian Pageant"
The next step was to create the finished artwork. This was by far the most time-consuming part of the process. I completed the art out of sequence, sending the paintings off in batches to be photographed for the publisher. Parting with finished artwork before the book was finished made continuity difficult.

13 comments:

It's amazing to see how much research, detail and preliminary work went into Dinotopia - though I venture to say that regular readers of your blog aren't too surprised to see how much you put into it.

The thought crossed my mind that there must have been some discouraging and/or difficult aspects to the project as well. Or maybe, (sensing that you're a quite even-tempered and not easily flustered guy) that's not so much the case. Still, I wonder what - if anything - you would want to share about particular challenges.

I've been a regular reader for quite a while, two years or more, and this series has blown me away!As Michelangelo said "If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all".

Alhaitham, so true. I don't miss the cut-and-paste. I use Indesign to design my books now.

Thanks, Tom. I tried to include some of the challenges in the last post. In general, though, the most challenging aspects were in retrospect the most fun and meaningful aspects.

Sara, The Library of Congress offered to research a topic for me in exchange for a lecture I gave to their staff. But I believe they try to help anyone with bona fide research credentials, such as an author writing a book. The folks at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Smithsonian also were very helpful to me in my research, and I'm grateful to them all.

Amelia, a good question, but one that would take time to answer, so maybe I'll do so in a future post. Basically, I work with washes thinned in solvent and liquin over a pencil drawing sealed with acrylic matte medium.